Title: What explains unequal responsiveness? investigating the role of institutional agenda setting, costly policies, and status-quo bias
Abstract: Previous studies on the opinion-policy link have shown that political representatives appear to be more responsive to the affluent than to the middle- and working class. The main explanation in the U.S. based literature is that economic transactions from the economic elites to the political elites lead political representatives to take decisions that satisfy the preferences of the wealthy. This paper provides an analysis of the opinion- policy link in Swedish politics, a context where campaign donations are relatively small. Despite this, the results confirm that high-income citizens receive most policy responsiveness. Three alternative potential explanations are discussed. Do the high- income citizens receive more responsiveness because a) they are better at putting issues on the political agenda, b) because they are easier to satisfy and prefer “cheaper” symbolic policy reforms while the low-income citizens prefer more costly policies, or c)because the status quo bias is working to the advantage of the high-income citizens?
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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